Gigan is, no joke, my favorite kaiju. So rather than doing a bunch of setup about how this movie is directed by Jun Fukuda and stars Haruo Nakajima with Kenpachiro Satsuma reprising his role as the titular antagonist, let's get straight to talking about the movie that introduces the best boi Gigan.
If You Haven't Seen it Before
- Hired to make some monster designs for an upcoming theme park called Children's Land, a manga artist sees a woman flee a building as he heads in. She drops a tape which he retrieves, and becomes embroiled in a conspiracy.
- When they play the tape, it sounds like garbled nonsense but we the audience can see the monsters on Monster Island react. They then have a conversation we see through cutesy subtitles and Anguirus goes to "check it out" after Godzilla tells him to.
- Anguirus arrives on land and is viciously attacked by the military. He retreats as the bad guys reveal themselves to the good humans and are also forced to retreat.
- The bad guys are revealed to be Nebulans, aliens, cockroach-like alients who want to establish "peace" and take over the planet for themselves. They summon King Ghidorah and new monster Gigan to Earth to fight on their behalf using their tapes to control them.
- As Gigan and KG utterly destroy Tokyo while being controlled by the Nebulons, Anguirus returns with Godzilla in tow to bring an end to the assault on humankind.
- Realizing the aliens are controlling Gigan and King Ghidorah, Godzilla turns to attack the Nebulon's lair. It is, of course, equipped with a powerful laser that legitimately injures him (after his other foes have done some damage).
- Near the end of the film, the heroes (human and kaiju alike) are getting their shit absolutely rocked by the combined might of the Nebulons and their minions, but the human plan to blow up the base finally frees Godzilla from the wrath of the laser inside the children's theme park.
- With Gigan and King Ghidorah free from Nebulon control, the monsters have another tornado tag match. Godzilla and Gigan settle things first, with Godzilla scoring a come-from-behind advantage while Anguirus mostly loses his own fight against King Ghidorah.
- The fight ends with Godzilla giving King Ghidorah the Kurt Angle special: first holding him still while Anguirus tackles him (spines-first) and then suplexing him 3 times. For understandable reasons, Gigan and KG decide to run away back into space.
- Our human heroes big adieu to Godzilla and Anguirus as they head back home now that peace on earth has been achieved once more.
Kaiju Notes
- Gigan is perfect. He is the best boi and the only kaiju for which I will always have no notes. His luscious, chicken like form is stunning. His rotating chest blade is amazing. The choice to give him a single giant red eye that is apparently useless is stupendous. The fact that he has no hands and just has hooks instead is genius. Some of this might be hyperbole even though I mean every word, but Gigan legit does have an excellent profile.
- Gigan is especially aggressive compared to most kaiju, who typically (try to) ignore the military around them. But Gigan specifically jumps and reaches for planes to destroy, using his (incredibly dope) hook-hands to knock them out of the sky, even though they clearly can't harm him.
- The fight in Tokyo when the four monsters meet up for the first time is actually one of the more spectacular (literally, a spectacle) events we've seen in any kaiju movie thus far. The monsters fight, but in a reckless manner (as a giant monster might) that destroys almost as much as it saves. Like fighting Hedorah before, it's actually more interesting to me to see the destruction that all kaiju cause all the time, even when they're not trying to destroy a city.
- King Ghidorah does return in this one, and it's nice to see him come back and actually use his Gravity Beams in a fight. He gets his ass kicked every time he decides to use his armless body to physically fight and it makes him look stupid. Not to say a neck could never be used for a successful attack, but it's not typically recommended.
- For the first time ever, Godzilla bleeds. He is cut by Gigan's rotating saw and apparently has normal red-colored blood. Anguirus also gets a truly brutal slice to the face that caused an audible reaction from me. This reflects the above comment that Gigan is pretty brutal; he also uses his hook hands at one point to hit Godzilla in the same spot enough times int he face to cause another gush of blood. Gigan's a beast.
- Anguirus repeats his tactic (and footage) from Destroy All Monsters and latches onto King Ghidorah's neck. It goes exactly as well this time. He does learn to launch himself using his spiny back as a weapon, so he's capable of trying some new tricks.
This now makes a few Fukuda-directed Godzilla movies we've seen so far and I think it's time to confess that I prefer him to Honda. Honda obviously gets credit for originating kaiju fluids and making several great films, but we're 3 into Fukuda's run and I have enjoyed all of them. Even the one most people hate: vs Ebirah. In comparison to Honda, he has a great sense of scale and consequence, as well as embracing the monstrousness of the monsters. It is, as most film related opinions, a matter of taste, but Fukuda seems to know how to hook me in a way that Honda didn't always. I am also cheating a bit by knowing that Fukuda directed one of my absolute favorite Godzilla movies that I've seen so far, so in this paragraph he's getting future credit that we will get to. Another trait of Fukuda's direction that I prefer: much more focus on kaiju fights. I watch these movies primarily to see monsters battle, and Fukuda seems to understand that. While human stories help anchor things, we're here for the monsters.
Monsters talking to each other doesn't happen enough. I love it every time and especially appreciate that the movie doesn't try to give monster conversations pathos. They're silly, let them be silly. You remember the best episode of Pokemon? It was the one where the pokemon talked to each other but still did their stupid "repeat only our names" thing and it was rad. So let's have Anguirus and Godzilla have a chat usint giant speech bubbles while weird sounds come out of their mouths. It won't work in films of every tone, but it did for this especially "out there" film.
Another highlight of this film: it might feature the most thorough destruction of Tokyo (or similarly large city) we have seen in a kaiju movie thus far. Gigan and King Ghidorah wreck it pretty thoroughly before Godzilla and Anguirus arrive, and they manage to contribute to the destruction of Tokyo once they make it to land as well. As I mentioned above, Fukuda (and this script) truly embraces the danger of kaiju. This was also a theme in the previous film in the series, Godzilla vs. Hedorah, which readers may remember as being a big hit for me.
But! The seriousness of the violence is weighed delicately against the absurdity of both the plot and the "human story." The above plot points is an intensely simplified version, as the plot moves in unusual lurches and jumps in logic. Explaining it as it happens seem impossible through text, so it has to be reduced to its "points" rather than being a chronological telling of the story as it happens. It's entirely reasonable to see this as a weakness of the storytelling, but I personally find it engaging. Multiple times while watching I said, out loud, "this movie is fucking bonkers." And it is. And that's part of why I love it.
In a movie about a manga artist taking down a children's theme park that is also a secret base for a group of cockroach-aliens that have an extremely powerful laser inside the mascot and want to bring peace to Earth through violence and then take it over for themselves, somehow even more absurd things happen as it moves. Seeing a squirming, talking cockroach is simultaneously disgusting and hilarious. I hate looking at cockroaches in any capacity, but watching them call out for their friend under a pile of rubble is amusing nonetheless.
The last note I have is that there does seem to be a message here about the cost of peace. Multiple times peace is implied to be simple to achieve (by the aliens, who are liars) but the latter half of the movie is determined to demonstrate this is not the case: even defending Tokyo from monsters who were destroying it causes a ton of the city to also be destroyed. Perhaps there's something there. The characters reference how complex peace truly is on multiple occasions, first pushing back on the Nebulons insistence that a theme park can bring it about (okay, fair) but later struggling with having the power of Godzilla and Anguirus be the saving grace against the ultra-violence of King Ghidorah and Gigan. It's not settled by the end of the movie, of course, but the humans seem to acknowledge that all of the events (including their own bombing of Children's Land) were necessary to bring some notion of peace back to the world.
Conclusion: I love this movie. Even when it's ridiculous and stupid, it's ridiculous and stupid in a way I enjoy. The monster action is quite good, complex, and lengthy. It's basically everything I want in a silly kaiju movie. Though I do prefer my kaiju movies somewhat more serious-minded to be truly "great," I can still enjoy the hell out of the absurd ones (and often do!).
Next: Godzilla vs. Megalon!
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